Ice-a-Claus is Coming to Town
Editor’s Note from Clayton:
Every now and then, we feature a guest blogger here on the hallowed pages of Cincinnati Delusion. This post comes from Chris Sutton, a lefty friend whose thoughts you can follow on Twitter/X. In this piece, he shares how everyday people can drive meaningful, incremental change — one day at a time. It’s a lengthy piece, but one that you will certainly enjoy.
The most deflating moments of my tenure as a politico came working the bullpen at the Hamilton County Board of Elections during the 2021 Cincinnati City Council race. Volunteering for an independent, outsider candidate, myself, as well as our team, knew that winning would be a moonshot. For roughly a year, our small but dedicated team, composed of The Radical Left, the Marxists, the Anarchists, the Agitators, spent upwards of 40-ish hours a week on top of our full-time gigs to knock doors, attend community events, phone and text bank, host fundraisers, and do whatever we could to get out name out there. Because we were boxed out of having the backing of the Democratic Party due to our inability to fundraise from P&G & Kroger execs or Real Estate Developers, and weren’t interested in the Republican or Charterite backing for reasons that should be obvious, we were left to develop name recognition by sheer force of will.
When I got to the bullpen on a crisp October morning, coffee and campaign materials in hand, I expected to spend the day talking to potential voters about our affordable housing plans and the dignity of good wages for all workers. Instead, almost my entire day was spent answering one of 2 questions; “Are you endorsed by the Democrats? Can you tell me where to find the ballot for the Democratic Slate?” Call me naive (I am), or delusional (you have to be in electoral politics) but other than the Bengals Super Bowl loss that followed a few months later, I can’t remember a singular event that left me feeling more disconsolate. Suffice to say, our campaign came up drastically short in the election. Maybe our issues mattered to voters. But in local politics, endorsements reign supreme. A few candidates who were endorsed didn’t even have policy pages. If you’re “in the know”, you know that their policies are driven top down by the donors and top brass of the state and federal party; council is essentially a networking gig for an eventual swankier job. But I’d still argue that it’s important to know what people stand for before you endorse their bid for a seat in the office of power.
Man, were people really that disillusioned? Was the average Cincinnati voter really that confident that they would vote people into office knowing nothing more than they had the “D” next to their name? Sure, my time at the bullpen was just a snapshot, but it wasn’t the only time I heard “are you endorsed on the (Democratic) slate?” I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me want to completely check out of the political process altogether. And maybe I should have. Doing literally anything else with my life up to this point; getting married, starting a family, traveling, being a barfly that pesters the other regulars reliving the What Could Have Been’s of the Paul George Era Pacers - any of it might have been a better use of my time and the world would be pretty much in the exact same place anyways. But my soul is much to green around the gills to stop clocking in at the Gates of Hell of the political world.
I’ve long argued that voting isn’t usually the paramount expression of people’s political beliefs, even if voting is seen as the primary engine of our political economy. I do think there is a legitimate difference between voters and supporters - whether that chasm is a pond or an ocean, I reckon, is up to the individual. But sometimes, there are actions by politicians so in your-face it’s hard not to see the direct A to B between voter malaise and political recourse, you just want to do the Will Smith “Let Me Show You This” meme. And it’s how I feel currently with the recent deployment of Federal troops to cities around the country to harass anyone with a tinge of melanin in their skin.
For the sake of brevity I will spoon feed my take on what is happening with the ICE/DHS deployments, and why I feel it’s a matter of IF, not WHEN, they decide to come to Cincinnati. And I think the “I told you so” brand of politics is as bottom of the barrel discourse as you can get, but in the era of Trump, we’re all pigs rolling around in the muck, so in this case, I do think it’s relevant.
Immigration has much less to do with race than it does about controlling the flow of cheap, easily exploitable labor that capitalists depend on. Race is just the animating factor used to market the need of strong borders and endless ramping up of police budgets. I’ve previously explained this in another essay here the primary function of ICE - but suffice to say, only coming second to Israel, Border “Security” is largely a bipartisan effort. And despite their rhetoric, Cincinnati City Council is using taxpayer money to hand over all the tools ICE needs for when they’re eventually deployed on Cincinnati’s streets.
In September, Council approved a $5 million “Public Safety” package to purchase and build infrastructure including surveillance equipment like license plate readers, street cameras, and drones. Mind you, this is additional funding to Cincinnati’s bloated, and ever-increasing police budget.
Some of this money is going to go to installing more lighting in what are considered “high crime areas, but most of it will almost certainly end up in ICE/DHS’s and ipso facto, the Trump Administration’s hands. Nick Swartsell, (one of the best beat reporters in Cincinnati in my opinion) has the story here in WVXU - but the screenshot below is what immediately caught my eye.
If you are unfamiliar with FUSUS, let me put you on game, because even the devil himself would not make a deal with these demons. I would strongly encourage you, dear reader, to check out this story from Steven Hale from Nashville, about the community’s recent fight against FUSUS.
https://nashvillebanner.com/2025/04/28/metro-nashville-fusus-freddie-oconnell/
FUSUS is, for all intents and purposes, a data collection agency based out of Atlanta, GA whose main goal is to supply law enforcement with tools like license plate readers, cameras, and artificial intelligence. This technology, they say, will help assist in both deterring crime and allowing officers to respond to threats more quickly by supplying information to entities called RTCC or Real Time Crime Centers. Fusus was acquired by Axon (formerly TASER Inc.) in 2022, for an undisclosed sum in hopes that merging together wearable technology like body cameras and data collected by surveillance cameras would make a lot of money under the auspices of tampering down rising crime. In the article, as well as several other instances, FUSUS has had no issue in circumventing or outright defying any guardrails to help provide the information they collect to any government agency who asks, one of which being ICE.
The problem that Cincinnati City Council seems to have, is that there is no amount of data compiled by research agencies to show that body cameras, ShotSpotter, etc. deters crime. As the Mark Twain quote goes, Cincinnati is certainly behind the times, continuing to pay over a million dollars towards the failed technology, even as cities like nearby Dayton abandon it. Chicago, Republican’s self-proclaimed crime capital of North America, couldn’t even fabricate a story convincing enough to show the need for ShotSpotter. According to Chicago’s own Office of the Inspector General, 90% of calls from ShotSpotter inaccurately alerted officers to places where crime wasn’t even happening. And there are mountains of statistics to show that body cameras, license plate readers, and surveillance tech also do nothing to deter crimes. Incidents of police violence have increased since the Obama-era push to require officers to wear body cameras.
So why does Cincinnati City Council continue to fund already failed initiatives? I couldn’t help but see the jarring contradiction between police getting a full fleet of drones to play with, meanwhile Council patted themselves on the back for opening “safe sleep lots” for public school families. Is it your average bureaucratic incompetence? Is Council trying the Mike Brown/Blackburn approach of trying nothing until you’re all out of ideas? Or do they just not care? And an even bigger question - why are people not pushing back?
Cincinnati has hailed itself as a Sanctuary City, and Hamilton County Charmaine McGuffey campaigned on reducing collaboration with ICE in her 2021 campaign against Jim O’Neil, a guy who would make Sheriff Joeberg from Landman look like a bleeding heart liberal. I actually had a few opportunities to speak to McGuffey about this specific issue, and she continued to reiterate not just her unwillingness to collaborate with ICE out of moral principle. Even then, there are still many who distrust police in our communities. There were folks I knew who worked deeply in the immigrant justice space that had several meetings with her and her campaign team, tepidly agreeing that this is the rare case where the devil you didn’t know is the better option. But the problem is, does any of this matter? And the answer is, without material action - no.
The crux is that the community struggled to get local Imam Ayman Soliman freed after several months of illegal detainment. If the community is unwilling to actually put the heat on the officials they wantonly elected, then what power do they think they will have when the full weight of the federal government comes to town? A Sanctuary City is only a symbolic gesture - San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago are all Sanctuary City’s, but local police had no problem coordinating with ICE when Greg Bovino came to town. Do we really expect CPD to stand down when leadership will cut them a check regardless?
My first recommendation is to assume Council is ignorant: show up to council meetings and share the information. My comrades Jonathan (@Jonathan.n__) and Mohammad Ahmad (@palestinianpatriot) have been putting the heat on Cincinnati and Covington City council for years, using their platforms to educate attendees and social media followers on how local politics and politicians feed into the carceral and deportation machine.
Secondly, assume your local officials won’t do anything: There are groups in the area who are proactively educating businesses and individuals on their rights should they encounter ICE agents. In places like Chicago and Los Angeles, Community Watches have been really successful in alerting locals to ICE’s presence. LATaco is a blog I would highly recommend following to see how this can be done safely and effectively. Ohio 50501 is hosting Know Your Rights trainings, as well as CinciPEC (@cincipec) helping local businesses know how to handle ICE agents who try to enter their facilities.
Third: remember, ICE is a buffoonish cadre of otherwise completely unemployable cowards. They rely on the surveillance technology that FUSUS and Flock Cameras supply because they are simply too lazy and scared to confront people on an equal playing field. When they inevitably detain someone illegally, they can rely on the defense that the usually fallible equipment provided to them gave them bad intel and their hands should be washed clean.
Cincinnati voters didn’t ask for all of this surveillance technology to be used on them, but they do deserve a lion’s share of the blame for zombie walking people into office without vetting them. Council didn’t bat an eye when they had the opportunity to appease the suburban grievance mobs under the auspices of safety, so it should anger voters to actually impart some type of consequences that would actually move the needle. And this isn’t a “vote them out” type of situation. You think these people are scared of losing an election? Cincinnati City Council is a resume builder for whatever their next lucrative gig is. But while they’re there, aiding the Trump administration should not afford them the peace to be able to walk around in a city they were so quick to sell out.
I don’t know the answer as to the Councilmembers’ motivations, but I can say this with absolute certainty: when ICE picks Cincinnati as its next Carnival of Harassment, the entirely Democratic-led council will be sure the table is set and Greg Bovino will have any and all tools at his disposal.